"You look very well for a corpse, and many living men have not so good a color as you."
"What a week I have passed!—You can't imagine it, Rosalind. I hope that it will be worth at least a thousand years of purgatory to me in the other world.—But, if I may venture to ask you, why did you not answer sooner?"
"Why?—I am not quite sure, unless it was just because.—If that reason doesn't strike you as satisfactory, here are three others not so good; you can take your choice: first, because, in the excitement of your passion, you forgot to write legibly and it took me more than a week to guess what your letter was about;—secondly, because my modesty could not accustom itself in less time to the ridiculous idea of taking a dithyrambic poet for a lover; and thirdly, because I was not sorry to find out if you would blow out your brains, poison yourself with opium, or hang yourself with your garter.—There you are."
"You wicked jester!—You did well to come to-day, I assure you, for you might not have found me to-morrow."
"Really! poor boy!—Don't put on such a disconsolate expression, for I shall be touched too, and that would make me stupider in my single person than all the animals that were in the ark with the late Noah.—If I once open the flood-gates of my sentimentality, you will be submerged, I warn you.—Just now I gave you three bad reasons, I offer you now three good kisses; will you accept, on condition that you are to forget the reasons for the kisses?—I owe you that much, and more."
As she spoke, the lovely girl stepped up to the doleful lover and threw her beautiful bare arms around his neck.—D'Albert kissed her effusively on both cheeks and on the mouth.—The last kiss lasted longer than the others and might well have counted for four.—Rosalind saw that all that she had done hitherto was mere child's play. Her debt paid, she sat on D'Albert's knee, still deeply moved, and said, passing her hands through his hair:
"All my cruelty is exhausted, my sweet friend; I took this fortnight to satisfy my natural ferocity; I will confess that it seemed very long to me. Don't be conceited because I speak frankly, but that is the truth.—I put myself in your hands, take your revenge for my past rigor.—If you were a fool, I would not say this to you, nor indeed would I say anything else, for I don't care for fools.—It would have been very easy for me to make you believe that I was tremendously incensed by your boldness and that you would not have a sufficient store of platonic sighs and highly concentrated rhapsodies to obtain forgiveness for an offence with which I was well pleased; I might, like other women, have haggled with you for a long while and given you in instalments what I give you freely and all at once; but I do not think you would have loved me a single hair's breadth more.—I do not ask you for an oath of everlasting love nor for any extravagant protestations.—Love me as much as God pleases.—I will do the same for my part.—I will not call you a perfidious villain when you cease to love me.—You will have the kindness also to spare me the odious corresponding titles, if I should happen to leave you.—I shall simply be a woman who has ceased to love you—nothing more.—It isn't necessary for us to hate each other all our lives because we have lain together for a night or two.—Whatever happens, and wherever my destiny may guide me, I swear to you, and this is an oath one can keep, that I will always retain a delightful memory of you, and, even if I am no longer your mistress, that I will always be your friend as I have been your comrade.—For you I have laid aside my man's clothes for to-night; to-morrow morning I shall resume them again for all.—Remember that I am Rosalind only at night, and that through the day I am and can be only plain Théodore de Sérannes—"
The conclusion of the sentence was stifled by a kiss, succeeded by many others, which they ceased to count and of which we will not undertake to furnish an exact reckoning, because it would certainly be a little long and perhaps very immoral—in the eyes of some people—for, so far as we are concerned, we know of nothing more moral and more sacred under heaven than the caresses of a man and a woman, when both are young and beautiful.
As D'Albert's solicitations became more passionate and more earnest, Théodore's lovely face, instead of expanding and beaming, assumed an expression of dignified melancholy which caused her lover some anxiety.
"Why, my dear sovereign, have you the chaste and solemn air of an antique Diana, when you should display the smiling lips of Venus rising from the sea?"